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Boy sees girl; girl flashes boob; boy crashes car and almost kills dog; pair rush dog to vet, end up adopting pooch whom they name Colin from Accounts, and along the way the humans fall in love with each other. Now, in their third and final season of Colin from Accounts, Gordon and Ashley are still working things out, and Colin just wants dinner.
Such a simple but memorable premise has inspired a worldwide hit, name-checked by as many Hollywood names as critics, loved for its deadpan humour, the spark between its two leads (married in real life) and its ability to spin on a pin between soul-searching honesty and real, rare belly laughs.
I’m also envious of the viewer who has yet to discover Fisk (ITVX, Netflix), another comedy to confound its simple premise – “female lawyer wears brown suit to work” – with its ensemble of gentle eccentrics rubbing up against each other in a law office.
The only clue we’re in Melbourne is the sight of the number 57 tram, while there’s barely a glimpse of the Harbour Bridge in the Sydney-set Colin. Its stars Patrick Brammall and Harriet Dyer, who also write it, are resolute this is “comedy, don’t say ‘Australian comedy’.” Even so, neither is the first to prove that shows from Down Under make good travellers to these shores.
Our shared language, entwined history and mirrored institutions make for a seamless transition between hemispheres. And just as The Killing and Borgen became peerless ambassadors for Nordic TV, we’re enjoying the very best titles to have broken through.
As such, they walk in the hallowed footsteps of a group of entertainers long adopted by us. Decades before Adam Hills became a UK mainstay, we had Clive James observing us all through the bemused glint in his outsider’s eye. Dame Edna Everage took a similar schtick to an unfiltered extreme – who else could have disrupted the 2013 Variety Performance with her arrival in the Royal Box, before she told then Prince Charles and Camilla she was off? “They’ve found me a better seat.”
Meanwhile, far away from such osmosis into British life were native heroes leaning unapologetically into their Australianness, like Paul “fair dinkum” Hogan and Neighbours’ Max “Strewth!” Ramsay. The magic of this recent crop of shows lies in their skill in mixing the two: the native with the transportable.
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Last month saw the country’s Logie Awards mark 70 years of Australian TV with a national poll to select their greatest TV show of all time. The winner was Kath & Kim (Netflix), a comedy with another one-line idea – “divorcee Kath’s self-improving life is foiled by the return home of her grown-up daughter Kim” – that lets its stars (and again writers) Jane Turner and Gina Riley satirise the habits of modern Australians, from Tim Tam biscuits to bright orange tan-in-a-can.
All of this is local to the pair’s home in the Melbourne suburb Narre Warren, but it’s ultimately about family, which makes it as universal as Colin’s owners’ romantic struggles or Fisk’s office tribulations. And the national instinct for fair play, to bring pompous people and ideas instantly down to size, sits very easily with our own sensibilities.
As it should. After all, as one Aussie pal reminds me, “Thanks to the ABC, we’ve been fed on a TV diet of British humour all our lives. Now we’re just selling it back to you.” Which must lend an extra tickle to their already funny bones.
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Colin from Accounts will officially debut on Monday 7 September at 10pm on BBC Two, with the second episode airing a day later at the same time.
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